This invention relates to sheet counting apparatuses, and more particularly to sheet counting apparatuses in which the number of sheets laid in overlapped or superimposed state during the sheet conveying operation is also positively counted.
In a conventional sheet counting apparatus, sheets loaded therein are taken out one by one and laid on a sheet conveyor in such a manner that the sheets are not overlapped one on another, that is, the sheets are spaced from each other, and are conveyed to a counter. In this operation, whenever a space between two adjacent sheets is detected, one counting pulse is produced and is counted by the counter. Therefore, if the sheets are always laid correctly in this manner, the count made by the counter will be correct. However, if the sheets taken out are overlapped, the count made by the counter will no longer be correct.
In order to solve this problem, the conventional sheet counting apparatus is provided with sheet-overlap detecting means. However, this conventional apparatus is still not fully satisfactory in that upon detection of a sheet-overlap the operation of the apparatus must be suspended to eliminate the sheet-overlap. Thus, the conventional sheet counting apparatus has a low sheet counting efficiency. Therefore, there has been a strong demand in the art to provide a sheet counting apparatus which can positively count the number of sheets even if sheets taken out are in an overlapped state.
This demand is met by the provision of a novel sheet counting apparatus according to this invention in which sheet detecting means, as described later, is employed for detecting the number of layers of overlapped sheets.
Sheets to be counted by such sheet counting apparatus are not always plain ones such as white sheets or blank sheets. That is, there is a sheet counting apparatus for counting sheets which, like bank notes, have figures or patterns and which are overlapped when taken out of the sheet container. In this case also, the number of sheets should be positively counted regardless of the figures or patterns on the sheets.